By Ande Jacobson

Released in November 2023, The Spy Coast is the first book in Tess Gerritsen’s The Martini Club series about a group of retired spies living in the (fictional) small coastal Maine village of Purity. The trouble is that even though they were trying to leave their former lives behind them, events often have far-reaching consequences they hadn’t considered. The main story begins in the present in the quaint Maine village and careens around the world to Thailand, the UK, Italy, Istanbul, Malta, and points in between bouncing between the past when a mission went horribly wrong triggering events in what was supposed to be a comfortable and incognito retirement.

Maggie Bird tried to disappear for a long time after her wayward mission. Some dear agency friends including Declan Rose, Ben Diamond, and Ingrid and Lloyd Slocum had retired to Purity, Maine and told her of this idyllic place away from the politics and day to day dangers of their profession. Maggie, Declan, Ben, and Ingrid went through their training together, and they remained close friends over the years despite never actually working the same missions. While Lloyd was also in the know, he wasn’t an agent and was the only one of the group who could actually say where he worked. After her mission gone wrong, Maggie bounced around never staying in one place too long for fear of being found by those with nefarious intentions. Tired of living the life of a fugitive, she bought an old farm near her friends and settled into a comfortable routine raising chickens. Her biggest worry was fending off the various predators from the neighboring woods. Her nearest human neighbors, Luther Yount and his granddaughter Callie, were kind and nonintrusive. Over time, despite Maggie wishing to keep some distance, she started to look upon them as extended family. She also frequently got together with her fellow spies for their book club (later named The Martini Club) at the Slocums’ house, though they rarely discussed the book they’d agreed to read. The club got its name when an unfortunate incident brought the local police snooping around.

Maggie didn’t get many visitors, but one day a young woman calling herself Bianca showed up on her doorstep looking for information on Diana Ward, somebody Maggie would prefer to forget. Bianca sought help in finding Diana, but Maggie sent her packing wanting only to be left alone. Later the same night, Maggie was meeting with her book club for dinner when unbeknownst to her, a dead body was unceremoniously dumped into her driveway. She finds out about it when Luther calls her to find out if she’s OK. Evidently there was a commotion in front of her house with the local police making quite a scene. Long story short, the dead body is the young woman who had visited Maggie earlier, and this mystery now involved the local police and the state police given murders weren’t a common occurrence in their quiet little village.

It doesn’t take long for Maggie to meet the acting police chief, Jo Thibodeau, a smart, intense young woman and a Purity native. There’s a mystery here, but Maggie and her friends don’t yet know what’s going on. They suspect it might have to do with Maggie’s past in some way, a past that they cannot discuss with the police and that Maggie hasn’t even told the club about in any detail.

What follows is a wild ride. It’s a mix of family drama and a spy thriller as it bounds across multiple continents. Gerritsen expertly leads the reader to discover the details while gently exposing key bits of Maggie’s past career into the mix. One thing is certain. Old spies never truly retire. Certain habits just don’t go away, and puzzles awaken their instincts to look beneath the surface. Jo’s dogged determination and intelligence remind Maggie of herself in her younger days, and over the course of the investigation, they develop a somewhat grudging mutual respect for one another.

Gerritsen came up with the idea for this particular book because of what she and her husband saw happening in their small Maine town. Gerritsen and her husband are physicians. Although she retired some years ago to become a full-time writer, her husband continues to practice. Part of his process when he sees a new patient is to get an occupational history, and a strange thing kept happening. Several of his patients would answer that they used to work for the government, but they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, talk about their work. This particular theme struck him as weird, and eventually, the local realtor mentioned to them that the folks who gave these kinds of answers had retired from the CIA.

Gerritsen’s medical background is certainly of use in a murder mystery, though that comes out even more in her Rizzoli & Isles series following the adventures of detective Jane Rizzoli and the chief medical examiner, Maura Isles. That book series also inspired a TNT television series of the same name.

Why did Gerritsen call the town Purity? Despite some recent news of the problems more common in other parts of country intruding, Gerritsen wanted to play on the image of Maine being innocent and pure. She lives in a town of only 5,000 people.

What about Longmorn? Gerritsen has tasted and loved this brand of fine whiskey, and so she included it in the story. Maggie’s favored martini is the recipe Gerritsen prefers as well. The name of the book club also playing on the martini theme wasn’t planned. It fell out of thin air much as it happened in the context of the story. Gerritsen had no personal attachment to it. It just sounded good to her in context.

Gerritsen has been to the many foreign locations depicted in the story including places in Thailand, Italy, and the UK. She brings an authenticity to the locales as her characters become part of harrowing events. This is where Gerritsen excels in bringing readers along for the ride immersing them in each culture and location feeling the oppressive heat of an open air Bangkok marketplace in the middle of summer or the cold of a freezing Maine winter in their mind’s eye.

The exotic food tastes of The Martini Club come from their foreign assignments which is something that usually happens to anyone spending significant portions of their lives overseas. They hunger for local delicacies not available in the U.S., and Gerritsen’s characters like to share with one another.

While Gerritsen initially intended The Spy Coast to be a one off, by the final draft she found that she had become fond of the characters she’d created, and her publisher agreed. A second Martini Club book is now in work though it’s not scheduled to be released until early 2025. Still, it’s nice to know that readers will see Maggie and the gang again, this next time a little closer to home in Purity. Whether the series goes beyond the upcoming second book remains an open question for now. 

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References:
The Spy Coast, by Tess Gerritsen
https://www.tessgerritsen.com/
Bookreporter Talks To… Tess Gerritsen

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